Concept-centered teaching: A teaching internship program for undergraduate teaching assistants of Biology 18

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1 Concept-centered teaching: A teaching internship program for undergraduate teaching assistants of Biology 18 Course Summary Spring 2008 Time: TBA Instructor: Professor Melissa Kosinski-Collins Contact information: kosinski@brandeis.edu, Office Hours: Tuesdays 8-10:30 am, Kalman 310A Research in science education shows that the greatest obstacle to student learning is the failure to identify and confront the misconceptions with which the students enter the class. This course focuses on developing the participants ability to uncover and confront student misconceptions and to foster student understanding and retention of key concepts. Students will meet once a week to discuss topics and efforts underway in the biology education field and will put these ideas into practice as teaching assistants of the introductory biology laboratory course. Course format The course will have four components, reading primary literature in science education, discussing key concepts in select areas of biology, attending a weekly TA training session, and teaching a laboratory section of the introductory biology lab course (Biol18a or Biol18b). We will discuss at least one original primary literature education paper each week. The papers must be read in advance of the class. Our goal will be to critically analyze these papers. To help us achieve that goal, each of you will be expected to to the instructor two discussion questions for the article covered that day by the morning of the class. In discussing the papers, we will focus on articulating the main points of the paper, identifying conditions under which the data was collected and assumptions used in interpreting the data, and discussing how the results could be applied to the teaching environment at Brandeis. Starting the third week of the seminar series, course participants will be asked to facilitate the literature discussions. On these weeks, please your questions to both Dr. KC and the student facilitator. Participants will also serve as undergraduate assistants for individual sections Biol18. Students will most often be partnered with a graduate TA who will be primarily responsible for giving prelab lectures. UTAs enrolled in this course must independently give the prelab lecture for their section at least 3 times during the semester, and should schedule these dates in advance with their graduate TA partner. In addition, students taking this course must help facilitate the post-lab discussion in their section. This involves asking conceptual questions of Biol18 students and encouraging student active learning. You must attend your assigned laboratory section each week. Participants will also be required to attend a weekly TA training session on Friday afternoons. In this session, we will go over the upcoming week s lab, be shown examples of lecturing techniques and strategies, and will be given advice on how best to encourage student participation and inquiry-based learning in Biol18. On occasion, these sessions will consist of exam or lab report grading. Students must attend these sessions as learning how to evaluate work and provide critical feedback is vital to success in teaching. Course Goals and Motivation This internship is designed to serve two purposes. First, we expect students to get experience teaching and interacting with other students. Course participants will do so by acting as an undergraduate teaching assistant for Biol18 and by leading discussions of educational journal articles during class time. Second,

2 this course will provide participants with an introduction to popular techniques used to teach science and biology. We hope students will emerge from the class with a more complete understanding of biological education research and be able to apply these tools in a classroom setting. Attendance This is a discussion-based seminar series, so attendance is mandatory. Participants must additionally attend all sections of their assigned laboratory sections and all TA training and grading sessions. In the case of an emergency or unanticipated absence, please Dr. KC as soon as possible and a make-up assignment will be arranged. Written assignments You will be asked to keep a list of notes of what worked and what did not work during the semester. This list should include notes on how well the students performed certain procedures, what if any value you think the exercise added to student understanding of biology, and any ideas for improvement of the laboratories. We will also ask you to keep a list of any misconceptions you uncover during lab. These are not formal papers, but notes from which you can ask questions and draw conclusions. We ask that you keep the notes with a minimal degree of organization, such that they can be shared with the instructors and the rest of the class. In addition, participants will be asked to draft one of the following based on their observations of student understanding by the end of the semester: an entirely new exam consisting of at least 4 multi-part questions covering topics of the class in the standard Bio18 format, an entirely new laboratory exercise that complements the newly designed series of 7 project labs following the standard Bio18 format, a multiquestion homework problem set covering at least 8 of the 10 concepts covered in Bio18. A draft of this assignment should be turned in by November 21 st for feedback and critique. This assignment is formally due on December 10. Oral presentations As we proceed through the semester, you will be required to be principally in charge of running the paper discussion. You are also required to solely lead the pre-lab lecture portion of your laboratory section at least 3 times during the semester.

3 Schedule: Week of January 21 st Reforming Undergraduate Biology Education It is widely recognized that current undergraduate curricula do not adequately prepare our students for successful research careers in the biomedical sciences. The National Academy of Sciences issued a report in 2003 that called for major reform in the overall training and preparation of our students. We will talk about how the scientific community digested this news and began the process of change. Jo Handelsman, et al. (2004) Scientific Teaching. Science. 304: Week of January 28 th Retraining the Educators of the World to Teach Conceptually One major barrier to conceptual teaching is the faculty themselves. How do we get faculty to accept conceptual change? How do we get faculty to change their current philosophies and methods? How do we even teach veterans what conceptual teaching is in the first place? We will examine a summer program established at the University of Wisconsin which seeks to do just that. William B. Wood and Jo Handelsman. (2004) Meeting Report: The 2004 National Academies Summer Institute on Undergraduate Education in Biology. Cell Biol. Educ. 3: Week of February 4 th OUREACH and Conceptual change The secondary schools of the world often provide the spark of interest for our students to pursue careers in science, but equally as often turn perspective students away from the science fields. As conceptual change takes hold in higher education, it is our responsibility to teach both high school students and teachers alike the excitement of biology. Marilyn A. Niemann, Michael L. Miller, and Thelma Davis. (2004) The University of Alabama at Birmingham Center for Community OutReach Development Summer Science Institute Program: A 3-Yr Laboratory Research Experience for Inner-City Secondary-Level Students. Cell Biol Educ. 3: Week of February 11 th Retention of students in graduate studies As the need for more trained scientists increases, the need to enact better retention policies is heightened. For example, why do so many minorities leave science before the completion of an undergraduate degree, never-mind a graduate pursuit? Programs have been developed across the country to address these issue and to keep students of diverse backgrounds interested in science. NIEHS Task Force on the Advancement of Minorities in Science: Vision for a model program. (1996) Cancer Res. 56: Week of February 25 th Education of Potential students as to biomedical applications As the boundaries between the scientific disciplines begin to blur, it is imperative that students see not only the multi-faceted nature of science, but that they acknowledge the emergence of new field like computational biology, biophysics, and neuroscience. Efforts have begun at many research universities to educate students about these new potential career paths. Eleanor J. Dommett, Martin S. Westwell and Susan A. Greenfield. (2007) A Multifaceted Approach to Neuroscience Outreach: Meeting the Challenges. Neuroscientist; 13: 447.

4 Week of March 3 rd Mentorship of rising professors As our students progress through their careers in science, it is imperative that they have good role models and well-trained mentors. It is very hard to convince a budding young scientist to continue along the research path if their first-hand experience with talented biologists is negative. Christine Pfund, Christine Maidl Pribbenow, Janet Branchaw, Sarah Miller Lauffer, and Jo Handelsman (2006) Enhanced: The Merits of Training Mentors. Science. 311: Week of March 10 th Drosophila genetic screens This semester, our students will be performing an enhancer/suppressor screen in fruit flies. We will look at the early implementation of this experiment at UCLA. Jiong Chen, et al. (2005) Discovery-based science education: Functional genomic dissection in drosophila by undergraduate researchers. PLoS Biology. 3: Week of March 17 th Protein modeling Last semester we looked at the use of protein modeling programs in our course. We will look at other institutions that have begun such initiatives in their undergraduate courses as well. April E. Bednarski, Sarah C.R. Elgin, and Himadri B. Pakrasi (2005) An Inquiry into Protein Structure and Genetic Disease: Introducing Undergraduates to Bioinformatics in a Large Introductory Course. Cell Biol. Educ. 4: Week of March 24 th Teaching bioinformatics and computational biology Teaching a complicated subject like computational biology to traditionally trained undergraduates is difficult at best. A consortium has been established between several universities which aim to develop curricula and software to handle bioinformatics education. A. Malcolm Campbell, Mary Lee S. Ledbetter, Laura L.M. Hoopes, Todd T. Eckdahl, Laurie J. Heyer, Anne Rosenwald, Edison Fowlks, Scott Tonidandel, Brooke Bucholtz, and Gail Gottfried (2007) Genome Consortium for Active Teaching: Meeting the Goals of BIO2010. CBE Life Sciences Education 6: Week of March 31 st Teaching RNAi Up and coming techniques like RNAi often provide exciting topics for lectures and laboratories for undergraduate students. We will look at a 6 week project based course that has been designed for biology undergraduates using RNAi. Natalie H. Kuldell. (2006) How Golden is Silence? Teaching Undergraduates the Power and Limits of RNA Interference. CBE Life Sciences Education. 5: Week of April 7 th Teaching Scientific Inquiry with Phage

5 We are constantly being told to teach students the process of science in the classroom, but are rarely given examples of how to actually implement it. We will examine the PHIRE program implemented at the University of Pittsburg that has been used as a model program to teach high school and undergraduate students the process of science. David I. Hanauer, Deborah Jacobs-Sera, Marisa L. Pedulla, Steven G. Cresawn, Roger W. Hendrix, Graham F. Hatfull. (2006) Teaching Scientific Inquiry. Science. 314: Week of April 14 th Wrap-up We will talk about what we learned, how teaching your section affected your view of biology and of teaching, your written assignments, and about how to improve Bio18. Your final projects are due on April 30 th by 12 pm